Near field communications (NFC) will facilitate transactions valued at $74 billion by 2015 as the technology is increasingly used for the payment of goods in-store and as transport tickets.
According to a new study from Juniper Research, this is over treble the estimated value of this market in 2011. The increasing use of mobile devices as an alternative to credit cards and paper tickets is one of the fastest growing segments of the mobile commerce market, which Juniper says is the reason for the significant increase in NFC transaction value.
Juniper's Mobile Commerce Markets report shows that the rapid adoption of mobile devices for commerce-related applications is by no means limited to NFC. All mobile money segments – money transfers, banking, payments and coupons – are forecast to exhibit significant growth rates.
Report author David Snow explained: 'Our report demonstrates the spectacular growth we see across all segments of the mobile commerce market. Four of these segments (money transfer, physical goods, NFC and coupons) will more than treble in transaction value over the next three years, whilst digital goods, banking and tickets will still on average, double over the same period.'
However, the report stressed that mobile commerce providers need to keep security issues in mind. Even if there is a perceived, if not actual, security risk in the mind of users, not only the specific mobile commerce application, but also the whole mobile commerce market may be set back until user trust is recovered.
The report also showed that whilst mobile coupons still represent the smallest mobile commerce segment, it is demonstrating the highest growth rate.
Juniper's Snow added a word of warning, that without interoperability, mobile money transfer services will struggle to gain a critical mass of users.
